30.6.11

An understanding is travelling around the mystics of London's East as to the fundamental direction of arrogance and position making of the Quilliam Foundation.

Some years ago, he of Egyptian jail fame was languishing in the gaol of the erstwhile Pharaoh Mubarak when he saw himself in a dream leading the Prophets in prayer.

He managed to get news of the dream out to the intepreters, however it is unfortunate that the interpretation did not reach his ears, it was that 'Don't worry, tell your friend he will soon be freed from jail'.

He seems instead to have interpreted it himself to mean that he had been given permission to reform Islam to his liking.

The reason we dont see anything other than halal, is because it alone is getting more industrialised in our technocratic modernity and fetishisation of Allah's Law. Its also a reflection of deep ummahtic distortion.

We resist and salute those that resist the consumerisation of the din and the bewitching of humans away from their role in creation in privaledged partnership with it.

While reducing the quantity of meant we consume we can drive up Real Standards whilst spending the same amount of moolah. The commodification of Creatures of God as meat really goes against dinic notions of life and dignity.

The video below is from Mercy Halal Islamic Slaughter, who sound like they are based in the Americas. In the UK there are a growing number of farms and initiatives who could do with your patronage. There's a facebook group 'ethical slaughter' that hosts several related resources also.

We work with carbon footprints, but the key one that we neglect too often is the arsehole footprint. The arsehole footprint sets of avalances and has repercussions on the spirit.

It's probably time to start talking to butchers and waiters and cooks and restauranters about arseholyness and the options available to them.

Egypts getting funny. Despite Ikhwan's political front intending only to run for under 50% of the seats in any election and not put a candidate for the top job, the other formations are jumping up and down.

Meanwhile googlebhai accuses everybody of ideology, trying to pull the old 'sort out poverty' line, as if such a task is unpolitical and devoid of political spirit.

Over the past 10 years im not sure if either political poles have developed significantly to find creative ways around this very late 20th century roadblock.

In other developments.

Hasan Nasrallah's recent not-coming-out-against-syrian-leader-bashar has compounded Hamid Dabashi's wrath and pissed off a lot of diasporic supporters who seem to beleive that a little realpolitik, or recognition of one's developmentia and limits is contrary to the ummahtic spirit.

A youngish american-israeli male has been caught in Egypt and stands accused of spying along with an egyptian businessman. His name is plastered all over the internet in connection with dubious pro-israeli propadanda campaigns and he has fought for the IDF.

AK party win a 3rd term in Turkey, Erdogan's victory speech pledged his commitment to everybody and this beautiful gem

"Believe me, Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul, Beirut won as much as Izmir, Damascus won as much as Ankara, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir."

20.6.11

I had the chance to watch Richard Nrton-Taylors theatrical compression of the Baha Moussa inquiry last week and the Tricycle Theatre.

The Late Baha Moussa was an Iraqi captured and beaten to death by the British Occupation forces in Basra. to date one person has been jailed for one year.

I recommend the play, not for entertainment, but to animate mobilisation and attention to the Inquiry which report in September.

Andy Ingram, a defence ministry MP at the time was played by an actor from The Bill. slimey slippery New Labour toe-rag.

the inquirey focussed mainly in the british. One of Baha Moussa's co-detainees was shown via video link, however was cut off when he started to get interesting, strayed from the narrow factual confirmation bit, and was making his own questions known. Cue Rowdy Unconformative Arab

Thus the middle classes like to listen to themselves and pay more attention to their reflections in the world.

The Inquiry is about the UK self interest, the audience too reflective for that interest. Dialogue, trialogue and quatralogue arent in the design.

*Turns head 90 degrees*

This is a characteristic of sarmila bose's book and the middle class interpretation of it. A lot of criticism of those who call her a genocide denier focuses on privaledge portrayal of pakistani soldiery above bangladeshi surviver. A lot of these folks arent getting qualitative resources at all and think this is newtonian physics.

But when two alike people meet their shared world view and anecdotary repository are much larger and available for viewing, repeating and manipulating. Military power is also inherently advantaged by birds eye command view with details.

17.6.11

Im not talking about that bullshit extremist/terror discourse that empires of white and brown use to twist and torture.

Its the everyday violence thats hard to resist I worry about. Occasionally bangladeshi fed and educated classes get jolted by some criminal marital behaviour and emit some whiteous indignation, ironically this comes a few weeks after celebrating the revenge of a castration event.

A few years ago i was interviewing people in bangladesh, quite a few and at length from all over the place. At the time there was a caretaker government and some kind of ban on official politics. People, weaker ones especially were appreciating greater safety. The politics of tribe and gang cause a great deal of grief in our country. Its almost as if it was purposely designed to lead us into the abyss.

People and families who had been displaced by river erosion, and out of their communities were especially vulnerable untill some coalescence had occured and still weakened thereafter andignobilised.

Thinking through Bangladesh, and other places I cant help but feel that if you cant provide safety you have no right to consider yourself free.

And thats not in any development goal i have seen.

Along with decoloniality, tawhesive interdisciplinarity and maqasidic islah i think that great efforts form the intelligent, resourceful, soulful and wise should be ranged at the issue of violence, its institutions and technologies of ceasefire.

Not the anatomy of violence or its record (player), but the movement, transformation and embodiment of it.

The political formation that is able to immobilise a raging and randy mob of awami league activists armed to the teeth with sticks, oars and pistols, without submitting to its logic, deserves a future.

The political formation that can promote a socio-spiritual environment of safety and space, all over the nation deserves a future.

4.6.11

In recent account-makings of killings in Bangladesh during the 1971 war, one of the rhetorics we use is 'numbers dont matter', one person is too many. While this is true, and killing one person is like killing all of humanity, I must beware of the blindness this calculated flattening creates.

If the Bangladesh war killed fewer people than the Bangladesh famine of 1974 then that is a great matter for the people to ponder.

1.6.11

The powerful and political institutions of whiteness, which move through us all to a hopefully diminishing extent, must be scrutinised, resisted and superseded. What better situation to think this through with than in the deployment of whiteness in religious activity?

It is apparent that many brown people would prefer a white convert Muslim to teach them their religion, or to speak on their behalf, or even script the language around what they mobilise.

What's the salafi fascination with Abdul Hakim Green?

Whats with ISB's infantile obsession with appearing white at every given opportunity?

Does anybody else feel perterbed by the insidious and creeping emelisation?

HOW THE HELL has it come to the point where people are selling 'traditional islam' back to consumerised asians in the UK? Its like the selling sand to the arabs cliche. Ooops.

How can groups like British Muslims for Secular Democracy even exist?

This is related to what underlies the fascination of finding scientific meanings in the Revelation (petty tafsir), accumulating badges of white institutional honour (social mobility) and using human rights as a vocabulary of virtue (secularised subjectivity). In addition to being closer to home (or TV) there's something potent about the yearning for a childlike innocence that meddles with your judgement and betrays a misunderstanding of His Forgiveness.

I'm not arguing for quotas for converts or decolonial-diversity mosque subcommittees, but for a more judicious consideration of racial and class politics in the Millat, because it buggers up the animation of ummahtic mojo.

See also: I've lost a lot of good friends to Dubai (c)

This colonial convert field has expanded as more organisations deploy whiteness as an attempt to buffer and to complicate things for their adversaries, both inside the muslim envelope and externally.

Its demonstrating itself to be a self defeating dawah/pr tactic and we are reaping the whirlwind as we speak. I do not think this is doing justice to anyone in the scenario, not least the collective intelligence and sensemaking capacity of the Millat.

Micheal Muhammad Knight's books relay what I suppose must be his experiences of white privilege in the brown millat in the US. Its really quite vivid and sexual. Eventually somebody from soas will write a book on this.

Nine heroes were slain by the Israeli Offence Force, and conveyance of relief to the beleaguered people of Gaza prevented this time last year. We learnt how organisations from turkey, malaysia and jews for justice were all united and courageous in their efforts to send their support to people living in the biggest open prison of our times.

I heard today that the NUS Black students were quite uinited in pushing forward palestinian solidarity, but were facing 'contestation' from the president who i thought had resigned over his lameness wrt student tuition fees. Its a special time these days as the colonialism at home is connected with imperialism overseas in the minds of young people. Students have realised how epistemicidal the education cuts are and are responding in all sorts of ways . New websites and publication collectives are sprouting up all over the place, and the cultural effects of these alliances will be felt for a long time, far more cohering than any apoliticised big society clap trap.

Yes, i think the FCO should contract out its middle east policy to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The UK supporters of Palestine have made a single and video on message. Do buy it when its available, for demo-politico-economically affect if not artistic appreciation.